Museums for Somebody: Children’s Museum Professionals and the American Association of Museums (1907–1922)

ABSTRACT

The first three children’s museums in the world opened in Brooklyn, New York (1899), Boston, Massachusetts (1913), and Detroit, Michigan (1917). This paper examines the contributions of children’s museum professionals to museum education through presentations at the American Association of Museums given by the curators of the first three children’s museums – Anna Billings Gallup’s (Brooklyn), Delia I. Griffin (Boston), and Gertrude A. Gillmore (Detroit). A review of the papers they delivered to their colleagues illustrates how their pioneering educational approaches – such as encouraging visitors to interact with objects and creating opportunities for children to become empowered and invested museum visitors – continue to shape the field. It also highlights the value of including a seat at the table for children’s museum professionals in conversations about museum education.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s museums
• museum history
• American Association of museums
• progressive education
• public schools

About the author

Jessie Swigger is Associate Professor of History and Director of Public History at Western Carolina University. Her book “History is Bunk”: Assembling the Past at Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2014 and received the Honorable Mention National Council on Public History Book Award. She is currently writing a history of the first four children’s museums in the United States.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jessie Swigger http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6541-6344

Notes

1 Spock, “Looking Back on 23 Years”.

2 “History and Mission”; “About Boston Children’s Museum,”; “Children’s Museum”.

3 “About ACM”.

4 Proceedings of the American Association of Museums; The American Association of Museums changed its name in 2012 to the American Alliance of Museums. Blanton, “American Association of Museums”.

5 Proceedings of the American Association of Museums.

6 Spock, “Looking Back on 23 Years,” 1988; Weil, “From Being about Something”.

7 Hein, “Progressive Education and Museum Education”.

8 Gallup, “The Work of a Children’s Museum”; all quotations and information in this paragraph about the Brooklyn Children’s Museum are from this source.

9 Kohlstedt, Teaching Children Science, 3.

10 Ibid., 62.

11 Gallup, “The Work of a Children’s Museum,” 144–9.

12 Kohlstedt, Teaching Children Science, 62–68; Hein, “Progressive Education and Museum Education”, 161–173.

13 Gallup, “The Work of a Children’s Museum,” 144–9; all quotations and information about the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in this paragraph are from this source.

14 Gallup, “The Essentials of a Children’s Museum”.

15 In some cases, children’s rooms were built to address the needs of the younger audience. For example, the Smithsonian Institution’s Children’s Room was opened in 1901 under the leadership of Secretary Samuel P. Langley. See JSwigger, “Knowledge Begins in Wonder”.

16 Gallup, “The Essentials of a Children’s Museum,” 84–93.

17 Ibid., 84–93.

18 Baldwin and Ackerson, Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Workplace, 183; “About Boston Children’s Museum.”

19 “About Boston Children’s Museum.”

20 Proceedings of the American Association of Museums, 1907, 25–187; Baldwin and Ackerson, Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Workplace, 183.

21 Porter, “Saving a Jewel of the Emerald Necklace”; Griffin, “History Study and Museum Exhibits”.

22 Griffin, “The Museum and Americanization, . For a fascinating discussion of representations of the child and the Americanization program at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, see Onion’s Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States

23 See for example, Cabot, “The Museum as a Centre for Americanization and Nation Study”.

24 Griffin, “The Museum and Americanization,” 12–16.

25 Ibid., 12–16.

26 Ibid., 12–16.

27 Ibid., 12–16; all quotations and information in this paragraph are from this source.

28 “About the DIA”.

29 “About the DIA,” explains that by 1919, the museum had changed its name to the Detroit Institute of Arts and was owned by the City of Detroit. According to “Children’s Educational Museum to Move”, three years before the new Detroit Institute of Arts building opened in 1927, the Children’s Museum found its own home in the David Whitney residence on Woodward Avenue.

30 “A Children’s Museum”.

31 Ibid., 17–19.

32 Gillmore, “The Work of the Detroit Children’s Museum and Its Relation to the Schools”; all quotations in this paragraph are from this source.

33 Ibid., 135–39; all quotations in this paragraph are from this source.

34 Spock, Boston Stories: The Children’s Museum as a Model for Nonprofit Leadership, viii.

35 In fact, recent scholarship focuses specifically on the question of children’s learning in the museum. See, for example, Andre et al., “Museums as Avenues of Learning for Children: a Decade of Research”

36 Garcia, “What We Do Best: Making the Case for the Museum Learning in its Own Right”.

37 “Evolution of the American Association of Youth Museums (AAYM) to the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM)”.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Alexander and Alexander, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums, 181.